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Hi
I have tried to search ABW for info as I am sure this has all been discussed before, but the search engine takes forever. Anyway, here are my questions:

1. Does Inktomi accept affiliate pages (read somewhere that Overture and Inktomi don't but one of them is more lenient)

2. What sort of page is worth submitting - only very niche area keyword pages, or any page.

3. Where on MSN search results do Inktomi listings appear. I notice they have section titles:
Featured sites
Sponsored sites
Web directory sites

3b. Same question for hotbot - they are Inktomi partners right?

4. Is there a demo of Position Techs service. I would like to see what control panel is available to subscribers. What sort of things can you do here?

5. Can you check how well a page ranks with Inktomi for the specified keywords?

6. Spiders every 48 hours. Does that mean it reindexes using its Inktomi algo every 48 hours too?

Thanks to all for the excellent help and advice I get on these forums. I have to say that i got into affiliate marketing late on. I am now seeing all o fthe search engines asking for payment - something I cannot afford. What is everyone doing now that Goto has kicked affiliates? It is a little depressing for me. I like many others hate working for other people.

Inktomi does accept affiliate sites (although I think their TOS does say otherwise).
I haven't use positiontech (I use NetSol), but from what I've heard positiontech is better.
Netsol charges me full price for the first URL of every new batch I add..ie. i add 4 today I pay 1@full price and 3 at the discount rate... If I add another 4 urls tomorrow.. I pay the same again.. from what I've heard.. positiontech does not do this..
I have better results submitting niche type pages, but your (& others) results may differ greatly.
Good Luck
Pete

1 - Inktomi doesn't discriminate against any type of site. Though check out their new spam guidelines as they are cracking down hard at the moment (and if you got to see the spam database when they made the mistake of leaving it open to the public, you will know that they can be harsh).

2 - Check out all your keyphrases in msn.com or your regional msn to see if it is possible to get that phrase into the top two pages before submitting a page.

Theoretically, you should be able to get pure Inktomi results high up in aolsearch.aol.com , but AOL does Very strange things with the Inktomi feed. Once I've figured it out, I will post it here.

First of all, I have no clue on how to optimize with them. I'm getting killed in keywords on Inktomi by sites I am pages ahead of in Google. Thats been stated before in ABW, that Google and Inktomi are not related in terms of cataloging.

Second of all, since inclusion (I used Positiontech), I am now regaining AOL users since I lost them a time ago and now am beginning (ever so slowly) to pick up MSN iWon, and Lycos. I don't think they all use Inktomi but I really don't know.

From what little experience I've had so far I would say it is well worth it.

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Thats been stated before in ABW, that Google and Inktomi are not related in terms of cataloging.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>There are SIGNIFICANT differences, absolutely, but it IS possible to optimize a page to do well in both Inktomi/MSN/AOL and Google.

As to the original question -- for me, Inktomi is very much worth it, many of my pages have made their yearly fee within the the first week of inclusion. OTOH, I still sometimes mis-guess and throw a page in there that does NOTHING. The good news is, I can replace them.

What has worked for me is submitting highly targeted product pages featuring search phrases that don't show lots of non "web page" listings in MSN. More "generic" pages (such as the front page of my directory site) have yet to do well for me (and I do keep trying them) and I end up replacing them.

Cedric's approach is spot on. If you are promoting something like JC Whitney or a shoe site where people do search on individual products, Inktomi should be your first choice marketing spend for all those individual product pages.

Actually I have noticed that the following works very well in less competitive areas and will save you $$$ by putting only one page in Inktomi instead of several for each product:

If all these products are related and you have a keyword tag that lists the same order as the title (no commas) plus a heading tag and first sentence that are similar, you should do well.

To put it in a real example:

title: large shoes - adidas, nike and converse shoes.

description: Best prices on large shoes. We have Adidas, Nike and Converse shoes.

h1 tag: Large Shoes - Nike, Converse and Adidas.

First Sentence: Looking for the best prices on large shoes - like Converse, Nike or even Adidas shoes.

This way you get not only your generic keywords in, but also Nike Shoes, Converse Shoes, large Nike Shoes, large Adidas shoes, large shoes Nike, etc. etc. as targeted phrases all in the one page.

This works well with Inktomi - doesn't do much good in Google though. And I would expect that my shoes example wouldn't work with the brands I've chosen, but you get the idea.

You basically create a long, but readable title and repeat it with slight variations in the description, keyword, h1 and first sentence. Then later in the page, you need only mention Adidas shoes, Nike shoes, Converse shoes once each.

If you do promote JC Whitney or a similarly niche market, try it, put the page into paid inclusion and you should get good results for less cost.

There we go, can't remember know who asked for real details of SEO techniques but you've got them anyway.

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Theoretically, you should be able to get pure Inktomi results high up in aolsearch.aol.com , but AOL does Very strange things with the Inktomi feed. Once I've figured it out, I will post it here.

~ markymark<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

You're a doll. I'd love to get some AOL buyers. I've always heard that AOLer's buy lots, but I don't get a lot of traffic from there.

Now, off to design a page ala Mark's instructions and try my first Ink submission. I have a domain that Google seems to have ignored and I really wanted to see how well the merchants convert already. Impatience is probably what is driving these ppc and ppi places, don't ya know?

Anyone know how long it takes for click thrus to appear in the Ink control panel? I checked this morning and my first trial URL is submitted to Inktomi. A quick check at MSN and AOL confirms that my URL is being reported in the results at the top of page one. The keyword used to bring me lots of traffic from Google until I dropped from 1 to 5 to 20 for that keyword. Have re-optimised for Google, and it seems to have worked well at Ink.

Only thing is no click thrus appear. I take it that this is not "live". I clicked on my link in MSN and it does not show up yet.